New findings: a gamechanger for diabetes care in refugee settings

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MSB47920

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New findings: a gamechanger for diabetes care in refugee settings

New findings: a gamechanger for diabetes care in refugee settings - INTER

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New findings: a gamechanger for diabetes care in refugee settings - AR version

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New findings: a gamechanger for diabetes care in refugee settings - GERMAN

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New findings: a gamechanger for diabetes care in refugee settings - FRENCH

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Unique Identifier Code / URN MSB47920

Date taken / Date Recorded 28/01/2021 4:27 PM

Country Kenya, Switzerland

Commissioning section MSF-SWITZERLAND

Photographer / videographer / producer Pierre-Yves Bernard

Usage Rights (MSF) External Media, MSF Fundraising, MSF Publications, Social Media

Formal Consent Copy available no

Editor's rating ★★★★★ (C)

Video format h264 (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661)

Duration 3m13s

Maximum Size 1080px × 1080px 445.37 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist VIDEO CLIP – Study – Insulin

ITW – Subtitles :
It's giving them back their autonomy over their over their lives. In a high-resource setting, we don't even think twice. It's completely accepted that it should be normal for people living with diabetes to inject their own insulin. Yet this is not the reality for people in many low-resource settings.

On-Screen Text :

A recent study brings hope to people suffering from diabetes in resource-poor settings.

Diabetes can be controlled with effective treatment.
But...
only about half of the people requiring insulin have access to it.

Diabetic patients need to receive injection of insulin at least twice a day…

Access to insulin has been largely prevented due to:
high prices,
complex treatment protocols
and challenging storage requirements.

Many diabetes patients need to receive a shot of insulin at least twice a day…
for life.

On-Screen Text :
Philippa Boule
Non communicable Disease Advisor for MSF

maximum
25ºC

ITW – Subtitles :

Patients need to have access to insulin. Product information requires that insulin is stored in refrigerated conditions until the point of use.
Afterward, it can be kept out of refrigeration, but really only up to temperatures normally at twenty five degrees for most human insulins, which are the ones commonly used in low-resource settings. And in one of these settings in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, patients were having to come to the hospital twice a day to get their injections because the temperatures were extremely hot. So way above the twenty five degrees at which we can store insulin during the time of use. And there were curfews imposed, which meant that patients often could not come for the evening injections. So they were only getting one injection a day.
And they were starting to see increasing admissions to hospital of patients with severe complications from the diabetes that can lead to death if not properly treated.
And so we teamed up with the University of Geneva Pharmaceutical Department to have a look at the stability of insulin under the temperatures that we found inside a patient's home in Dadaab camp.

On-Screen Text :
Joint by Médecins Sans Frontières and the University of Geneva,

the study demonstrated the stability of insulin at the high temperatures (25-37 degrees).

It means that patients can now take the insulin home in cooling containers to self-inject.

ITW – Subtitles :

This is really a game changer for patients living in hot conditions in the absence of refrigeration. This is just giving them back their entitlement in terms of the right to inject their own insulin and lead a more normal life with diabetes.

On-Screen Text :

The World Health Organization and pharmaceutical companies must now adapt their recommandations for the use of insulin.

ITW – Subtitles :

So with this evidence that really insulin is much more stable than product information currently allows. we really call on pharmaceutical corporations to submit to regulatory authorities for use of insulin under expanded temperatures in order to make this more feasible and possible for the many people living without refrigeration in hot temperatures.
We call for a consensus statement on the use of insulin, for example, in locally made cooling containers out of refrigeration and endorsed by WHO to give clinicians in low resource settings the confidence to be able to treat patients with insulin, ans enable them to inject themselves at home.